I'm an author specialising in family history, social history, industrial history and literary biography. Real stories; real people; real lives.

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Thursday, 1 September 2011

The Child Gangs of Castle Acre

There were over 73,000 boys aged ten to fourteen at work in the countryside in 1851. Over ten thousand girls worked as 'live-in' farm servants. Boys were not usually considered physically strong enough to do full-time jobs such as ploughing until they were about ten years old (age fifteen for girls). However, they did odd jobs such as scaring birds from the crops, or helping to glean after the harvest. The Poor Law 'reforms' of 1834 had resulted in a large increase in child labour in the countryside; children worked in the fields or helped with hedging and ditching at far younger ages than in former times. The restriction of parish relief meant that parents were desperate to find work for their children.
In counties such as Norfolk, a system of ‘gang labour’ grew up. It was a way of getting labour-intensive jobs such as turnip harvesting done as cheaply as possible. A farmer would pay a gang master to do the job at a fixed price. The gang master recruited workers at the lowest page possible to maximise his profit. Children as young as six worked in the gangs. Because they had to travel where the work was, they often walked miles to work, and back home again after their day’s toil. The parish of Castle Acre became notorious for its use of gang child labour. You can find out more about the gang children and reformers' battle to stop the gangs in The Children History Forgot.
Image: Oxen pulling haycart. Unknown artist, c.1790.

Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment! There were some 20,000 children working in rural 'gangs' in the mid-1860s in the UK. Do let me know if there was a similar system in the US, as I'd be really interested in hearing about it.

Hello, Ali. Children who were too ill to work would be dependent on their family for support. If they were 'disabled', they could perhaps earn some pennies for their family by begging. If they had no family, or their family could not afford to feed them, then they'd have to rely on help from the parish overseers or poor law guardians. If the parish overseers would not or could not give them 'relief' (food,blankets etc) in their own homes,the children would be taken into the workhouse.

Narrow Windows, Narrow Lives: The Industrial Revolution in Lancashire

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors' Childhood

The Children History Forgot

Regency Cheshire

About Me

I'm the author of several social history books and family history guides: https://goo.gl/HT8gAR.
My new book, Tracing Your Manchester and Salford Ancestors, for Pen and Sword, is out now. I'm a member of the Society of Authors. I write for adults and children. I like toast, crisp clear autumn mornings, and haunting secondhand bookshops. Je suis Européen.